From the Pulpit: A letter from Israel

(The following is a letter written by Rabbi Steve Silberman during a recent trip to Israel.)

Shalom friends,

I greatly appreciate your support of my wife. Your calls and emails to her while I am in Israel mean a great deal to me. I feel safe and secure, and wanted to share some thoughts with you.

It happens that my prior hotel was experiencing wi-fi problems due to some minor renovations, and therefore I was not able to email as often as I had intentionally planned. Not every element of Israeli life is governed by Hamas' violence directed against civilians. Daily life continues, albeit strangely, including repairs and renovations. Now, at our last hotel before returning to the U.S in 72 hours, we are preparing to enjoy our last Shabbat (Sabbath) together.

I just returned from a stroll through an open-air market near the beach, purchasing flowers to place upon our Shabbat table. Even as I enjoyed the sunshine and the aromas of the open-air spice merchants, I asked myself where I would find an enclosed room, preferably without windows, if I heard a siren. (Would we even think such a thought while strolling along the Fairhope pier?)

It is easier to go to the secure place in a hotel than on the beach.

Twice I have followed these instructions. Twice I have joined with others, awaiting the all-clear and then calmly returning to my hotel room. The third siren sounded while I was in a cab, traveling to the airport to pick up friends joining me for this vacation tour. I asked my cabbie about stopping and taking precautions. He reassured me that, based on the warning he heard on the radio, the rocket was headed away from us.

I will quote my friend Leah, with whom I shared a soft drink yesterday. She lives in Tel-Aviv and daily commutes 45 minutes to Jerusalem. A week ago, this accomplished and sophisticated 75-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, now a Holocaust teacher of adults, pulled off the highway, exited her car and lay down on the ground for 10 minutes. She got up, dusted herself off (along with all others on the highway) and continued home. I began to shake when I heard her resignedly say: "I dusted myself off from lying on a ground due to an approaching missile, and then I continued my 'normal' commute home."

I asked her about the Israeli responses to the Hamas missiles, and she responded, "Where shall we go? Shall we live in Switzerland? Our only home is here. And these Hamas terrorists are trying to kill us ... in our homes, our offices, our children's summer camps."

Daily, the local news reports that Hamas terrorists attempt to enter Israel from Gaza to attack kibbutzim and villages in Israeli territory. Did American media report that two Palestinian "medics" accompanying a Palestinian "patient" approached an Israeli patrol and then began tugging at their clothes? Upon closer examination their explosive vests were found.

Imagine working at a first-aid station and encountering suicide terrorists disguised as patients? It is the southern half of Israel, which is under the threat of rocket attacks which have continued for six years. If Mobilians were being bombed by terrorists launching rockets from Spanish Fort, would Mobilians ask the United Nations to conduct negotiations on their behalf or call upon elected leaders to exercise restraint in seeking to eradicate a terrorist threat?

I deeply miss my family and look forward to returning home. Yet part of me wishes to remain here in the lone modern democracy in the Middle East founded on humanitarian principles.

Part of me wishes to remain here to learn more of a land that has set up a military field hospital near Gaza (offering medical care for Palestinians including a 16-year-old boy who sought to detonate an explosive vest near Israelis) and a land wherein an Arab justice sits on the Supreme Court (Yesterday I saw him sitting on the bench next to a Jew wearing a Kipah, and a secular Jew.).

The attorneys arguing the case were an Israeli male Arab and a religious Jewish woman (Most Supreme Court cases are open to the public.). Does anyone of us think a Gazan, Jordanian, Egyptian or Saudi Arabian court would have non-Muslims or women as judges or attorneys?

It is true that the bombing of Gaza is causing a great loss of life. Sadly, Hamas places its own Gazans in danger by locating missile launchers and tunnels, which serve as munitions depots and launching points for attack in mosques, schools, homes and hospitals. (See this shocking video.)

On two occasions, local Israeli news showed weapons and rockets stored in U.N.-operated schools -- rockets that were turned over to Hamas upon their being discovered by UNRWA officials. The news reports that Americans are watching do not convey the terror experienced by Israeli mothers and fathers who shelter their infants and babies in safe rooms in fear of terrorists seeking to tunnel into their homes for purposes of kidnapping, assault and murder.

The news reports shown by CNN do not bring to your eyes the challenges faced by Israeli parents who have 30 seconds to evacuate three sleeping children. A friend of mine in Beer-Sheva shared with concern in an email: "With two arms I can only carry two babies. Whom shall I leave sleeping in my apartment?"

Even as Hamas broke the cease-fire for the third time, Israeli trucks were bringing supplies to the Gaza crossing. Earlier this week, 167 trucks brought supplies to Gaza. During D-Day, would American trucks have transported relief supplies to German civilians?

Six friends joined me on a vacation tour, for which the planning began a year ago. None of us is a hero or soldier. We simply wanted to travel throughout a beautiful land like no other, the land of the ancient Israelites, which was reawakened after 2,000 years of exile.

For two weeks, we have been exploring this small strip of land whose land mass is one-fifth the size of Alabama in square miles. From the intensity of the 3,000-year-old site of Solomon's Temple (known as the Kotel or Wall) to the uplift of a senior citizen center that trains poor retirees to be artists, from the wonder of an underwater grotto to the challenge posed by an open media and freedom of political discourse, Israel has to be experienced in order to be understood.

I need to close now. Again, I thank you for your concern. We are well and will share many pictures upon returning home. The seven of us on this tour are gathering for dinner in a few minutes. I look forward to speaking with you soon. Please give my regards to your families. Thank you again for supporting my wife.

Peace and shalom to you from Israel,

Steve

(Steve Silberman is rabbi of Congregation Ahavas Chesed, a synagogue located in Mobile, Ala.)